Rendering confusion

[Rob Grauert]

This is all my guess:

Even though you converted the video clip to match the compressor and frame rate of the timeline, the bar may still be green if you haven’t changed the resolution, as you mentioned. So FCP has to scale down your clip in real time to match the 720X480 resolution.

When the bar is red, it means FCP can’t make the changes to the clip to make it match timeline settings in real time. For example, if the compressor settings don’t match, FCP has to compress the clip to match the timeline. FCP can’t do this in real time to allow you to view in real time, so you have to render.

If it’s green, it means FCP can handle some of the rendering for real time viewing, but not for optimal viewing.

All the rendering has to do with the CPU. So basically, my guess (like i said), is that when it’s red, your asking too much from the CPU. When it’s green, like the resolution situation, the CPU can kinda handle it. I would imagine scale isn’t nearly as taxing as compressing.

Does that make sense? but like i said, this is my guess…an educated guess.

Robert J. Grauert, Jr.

[Paul Campbell]

Hey brother, your explanation makes good sense to me. I guess my only other question on it then is that if green means “needs rendering, but not so much that it can’t play in RT”, why then is the clip still green after I do an Apple-R to render everything? Shouldn’t that green turn to gray along with the red, too?

Thanks for the feedback.

Paul

[David Roth weiss]

[Paul Campbell] “if green means “needs rendering, but not so much that it can’t play in RT”, why then is the clip still green after I do an Apple-R to render everything? Shouldn’t that green turn to gray along with the red, too? “

I hope you brothers don’t mind if I chime in here to clarify…

Green stands for Preview, which means that FCP has enough overhead to give you a RT playback, though not at full resolution or framerate, depending upon which of those two variables you have selected to be dynamic in the RT settings.

Furthermore on the subject of RT performance, there are a number of things that add to RT performance and a number of things that detract from RT performance; there’s much more involved than simply matching the footage to the timeline settings. The throughput of you hard drive subsystem is a very big factor in that equation, as are the codec in use, the number of layers of video, audio, and graphics; the number of stills on your timeline. So, the colors that indicate render/playback status are really ever-changing and in constant flux, unless you happen to have so much overhead that your system is never up against the limitations of RT playback

Now, in your case Paul, if you’ve hit Apple-R and the green bar remains, that’s most likely because you haven’t check “Preview” in the drop-down menu that opens when you go to Sequence>>Render All. Everything there needs to be checked, most of all Preview and Full. And, do the same in the Render Selection drop-down as well. Then, render again, and in fact, it will actually all render this time, and all the colors will go away.

Can you dig it???

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Rob Grauert]

Nice. Great explanation, David

Robert J. Grauert, Jr.

[David Roth weiss]

Thanks Rob, glad to be of assistance.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Paul Campbell]

David, thanks a million for that! I just followed your instructions to the letter, and voila’. I love it. Also, muchos gracias for keeping with the groovy vibe of this thread. Sorry for the late reply.

Paul

[David Roth weiss]

That one is a good tip to know Paul. Now it won’t bite you again, at least for a while.

Why the good folks at Apple ship with those render settings unchecked by default we may never know. But hey brother, ours is not to wonder wonder why, we’re just here to edit or die.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Brandon Ivey]

I am having similar issues. I usually don’t have a problem with the green pars, just play right through them. But today I dropped a pic into the time line, and when it plays, it looks fine, but when I scrub the time line it looks like a bad TV reception off rabbit ears. The pics is 2234X1327 and I am editing in 640X480 MiniDV.

[Nick Kessler]

If I drop a new clip in a new sequence and the render bar is green and I go ahead and raise the clip volume 10db and the render bar is still green, do I have to render it it or can I export the clip to quicktime? Will my 10 db change still be intact on the exported clip? Or do I have to raise the volume 10 db, then render it, then export it to quicktime?

The reason I ask is because if I don’t have to render it when it is green, I can skip this step and save 45 minutes of rendering time on a 1/2 hour tv show……Is this a wasted step David?

Our show comes out of ProTools as a Quicktime movie and then we create a new sequence, drag the clip in, raise the volume 10db, render it(with green bar), re-export it out as quicktime for the final format which is 4:3 for the TV station. We raise the volume 10db to meet their broadcast specs.